A recent local news story featuring a short video of a UFO caught my attention. “Hector Garcia, of North Philadelphia, went outside for a smoke Sunday, looked in the sky, and noticed something blowing in the wind above the corner of 7th and Tioga. He captured video of a nebulous flying blob with his phone and it is attracting attention.”

Garcia’s short cell phone video was also uploaded to YouTube. Being that local news stories, and sometimes YouTube videos, may not stay on the internet for very long, I’ve included two screen captures of his video to illustrate what he saw.

Garcia’s video seemed familiar to me, as on two occasions I’ve seen similar things in the sky. The first occasion was with my friend Alex. It was a beautiful, sunny day in Seattle, and we were standing in Kerry Park enjoying the view and taking photographs. Suddenly I saw a diaphanous blob in the sky, moving westward. I had my DSLR camera on a tripod, and I tried to grab it to take a photo. By the time I got my hands on the camera, the object was gone. My friend Alex had much less of a psychological reaction on seeing it, believing it to be a balloon. My memory was that it was clear, or translucent, which is unusual for balloons, which are often brightly colored. Ultimately, I don’t know what it was that I saw, and is thus (for me) a genuine UFO.

In May of 2014 I was in Missoula, Montana. One sunny afternoon I drove up to Miller Creek, not far outside of the city. I brought along a Canon DSLR camera with a good telephoto lens. It was a nice day, but a bit breezy. I saw a black plastic bag, or perhaps a very dirty plastic bag, tumbling along, just above the tall grasses of an open field. I know it was a plastic bag, because I was close enough to it to get a good look at it. I watched it gain altitude, and I began taking photographs. I probably watched it, intermittently, for perhaps 20 minutes. It’s hard to judge altitude, but I would guess it gained several hundred feet, as it floated aloft and drifted away. It was certainly not a helium balloon, as its shape was irregular. Click on the photos to view them in full resolution.

I strongly suspect that the object Garcia recently recorded was a plastic bag. It moved slowly, its shape was irregular, and it appeared to be either white or translucent. It may have been catching sunlight at different angles during its flight. Being that Garcia used a cell phone, and probably zoomed in, the object may have been slightly out of focus which would enhance the mysteriousness of the event.